I blew up the rear rotor in a turbo car.  I was able to keep

the engine running on one rotor (I knew if I let it die it would
not restart).  I drove it that way 30 miles, it got me home.
Of course not at full power.

--
Perry Mick
Duckt N7XR
http://www.ductedfan.com

Was it ignition failure that caused this Perry? Did you take
that engine apart? Were the rotor or stator gears failed? Hard to

imagine the engine

still running with blown phasing gears.

Paul Lamar

The engine will run with no teeth left in the rotor. The housing will be

guiding the rotor around and since it is no longer being timed it will be
sliding along on the housing. The apex seals will stick in the grooves
instantly and the rotor will produce no more power. You can do a lap at
Pocono like that (with about 25 HP)but all you can salvage will be the
distributor and the oil pan. Every thing else will be well done and extra
crunchy.

Lynn E. Hanover

Lynn let me get something else straight.
What you are talking about in reference
to  cross fire is for the 12A distributor engines where the mag pick up

modules are

mounted on the side of the distributor. These control two separate coils.

The high voltage

from the coils  is then switched around to the various spark plugs as

needed by

the ignition rotor and the distributor cap. Is that correct? In that case

you

have the high voltage from the two simple coils and the low level signals

from

the mag pickups and amps in the same metal can. I.E. the distributor body.

I can see how that was not smart on Mazda's part. The later 87-92 13B

crank

angle sensors did not have that problem as the crank angle sensor only

sent a

low level signal pulse to the computer and the computer fired the

amplifiers

built into the base of the two coils. Right? or are they affected too?
One amplifier/coil for the leading plugs and one amplifier/coil for
the trailing plugs.

I am not familiar with the amplifiers and  coils on the 1993 and later

engines

but the crank angle sensor is on the nose of the e shaft and is no longer
a device driven with a bevel gear and shaft.

The MSD set up on the other hand uses a separate low level trigger from

some

place and a separate amplifier box and a separate coil. Correct?
Racing beat uses one completely separate MSD system and coil for each

spark plug

on their 900 HP turbo three rotor.

Also what Tracy is doing is using one GM/Nippon Denso amplifier/coil per
spark plug and sending low level pulses from the computer to fire each one
individually. Is that correct Tracy?


Paul Lamar

Amazing that the rotor would ever stay 'synced up' and not bind when a rotor
gear goes.  I've seen a bunch of trashed rotors (due to chiped / broken apex
seals) but never a busted rotor or stationary gear.  One engine I bought had
a blown apex seal (at a drag race track,  gear changes at 11,000 rpm!) and
was driven home over 300 miles.  As far as I know, no one has blown an
engine like this in aircraft use where the rpm is limited to around 7000 rpm
or less.  Every failure so far has been due to 'pilot continued flight into
overtemp conditions' :-)

You are correct about the configuration of coils & control lines in the EC2
in either Mazda coils (86 - 91) or the AC Delco coil setup.  No mixing of
high & low level voltages.

Tracy Crook
tcrook@rotaryaviation.com
www.rotaryaviation.com

 
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